


but do i want to know?

by novacorps



Category: Marvel, Marvel (Comics), Marvel 616, Ms. Marvel (Comics)
Genre: F/F, Fluff, Tooth-Rotting Fluff, this is sweet & disgusting
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-07-28
Updated: 2016-07-28
Packaged: 2018-07-27 08:04:03
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,653
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7610179
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/novacorps/pseuds/novacorps
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Nakia finds a letter in her locker. And then it gets weird.</p>
            </blockquote>





	but do i want to know?

Kamala stares at Zoe’s hastily retreating back and says, “Isn’t it weird how she said she had to go to English Lit, but the school day’s over?”

Nakia spins the dial on her locker and replies, “Definitely, but we can probably just chalk that up to Zoe being Zoe.” 

“Which is to say, weird.” Kamala turns to Nakia, who is struggling with her locker door, the humid heat of almost-summer causing the lock to stick more often than not, these days. “Do you need help with that?”

“No---just---give me---a second--there.” The door bursts open with a metallic clatter, and an innocuous piece of paper flutters to the ground. Kamala reaches down and snatches it up, eyes already burning with righteous anger. 

“Don’t people get sick of sticking mean crap in your locker because you decided to wear hijab? It’s been over a year, I wish they’d get over it already,” Kamla says, unfolding the piece of paper and scanning it. 

“Some people have nothing better to do,” Nakia replies, turning to empty her book bag into her locker. “It doesn’t bother me, you know.” It does, of course it does, but Nakia has always had a thick skin, so she doesn’t let it show. 

Kamala lets out a strangled noise of death in response. “Nakia,” she whispers reverently. “Kiki. Read this. Please.”

Nakia faces Kamala, but her retort dies on her lips at the expression on Kamala’s face. It’s two-fifths mischief and three-fifths unrestrained glee, which is a combination that Nakia’s afraid of, at least when it comes to Kamala. She reaches out and takes the paper from Kamala’s outstretched hand carefully, like it’s dangerous. 

If the look on Kamala’s face is any judge, it might as well be. 

Nakia sighs and begins to read what appears to be a letter. 

And stops abruptly, eyes going wide, face flushing with heat, gaze flickering between the letter and Kamala’s face. “What.” 

Kamala nods, bouncing up and down in place. “Yes. Yes, it is. “

“This is--” Nakia can’t say it. She can’t say it aloud, but Kamala evidently can. 

“It’s a love letter,” she says with relish. “From some mystery admirer to you.” Kamala grins again, shutting Nakia’s locker for her and grabbing her arm to drag Nakia down the hallway to the open door beyond. “This is going to require a sleepover.”

Nakia knows, from prior experience, that when Kamala sets her jaw the way she is right now, there isn’t a force in the galaxy that could stop her. Nakia resigns herself to her fate, and asks, “Yours or mine, cupcake?”

*

“So,” Kamala says, pacing Nakia’s bedroom in her Captain Marvel pajamas, hands clasped at her back like a general at war, “what is our game plan?”

Nakia barely hears her, absorbed as she is in reading the Letter---which has taken on capital letters of importance in her mind---for the hundredth time this day. For the hundredth time, she curses whoever wrote it for having the foresight to print it out, on exceptionally nice scented paper, because Nakia knows she knows who this is. No one could write about her as---as intimately and not be a close friend. 

She just can’t figure out which one of her friends could be in love with her. 

“Kiki? Hello, Nakia, planet Earth to Nakia, come in, Nakia, Kikiiiiiiiii,” and yes that is a sufficiently annoying whine to draw Nakia out of her thoughts. 

“Hmm?” she asks. 

“I asked, what’s our game plan?” Kamala repeats, flopping down on Nakia’s bed. 

“Do we have to have a game plan?”

Kamala shoots up, sitting up straight to look Nakia in the face, entirely too outraged. “Are you telling me you don’t want to find out who this is?”

Nakia struggles to find the right words. “Not that I don’t want to know, of course I want to know, but they decided to stay anonymous for a reason, Kamala. And I am mature enough to respect that.” 

Nakia manages to keep the facade of responsible almost-adult up for 30 whole seconds. “Okay, so I really want to know who it is, but I don’t know who it could be. They obviously know me--”

“Well, they know you well,” Kamala interjects, nodding. 

“Yeah, and that narrows down the suspect list a lot, because it’s not exactly like we have an enormous and bustling friend group, right?”

Kamala nods again, hair bouncing around her face. “A very narrow suspect list, to be honest.”

“It’s either Bruno, which, no, or Josh, which, also no. I’m lost.” Nakia digs her fingers in her hair and sighs, looking at Kamala, who has a very thoughtful look on her face. “What?” Nakia asks.

“Why no on Josh?”

Nakia raises an eyebrow. “He’s Zoe’s ex-boyfriend, Kamala, and he’s still super hung up on her. And anyways, even if it is Josh, I would never betray Zoe’s trust like that.”

“It isn’t breaking her trust if they’ve been broken up since forever.”

“Less than a year, Kamala, that is not forever.”

Kamala shrugs, scooting up the bed to sprawl all over Nakia. “I’m just saying, he has been hanging around you more often. And him and Zoe are on better terms now, remember?”

That’s true, actually. Zoe and Josh have been “hanging out”, Zoe’s words, as friends. And if he is into Nakia, then Zoe might have encouraged him to write the letter and stick it in her locker, as well as told him all about her. The thought of Zoe and Josh together is enough to make Nakia feel profoundly uncomfortable, but she carefully ignores the feeling in the pit of her stomach. 

“I don’t think I’m interested,” Nakia says. Understatement of the century, but Kamala doesn’t need to know that. 

“I would say ‘give him a chance, but you don’t have to,” Kamala says, plucking the letter out of Nakia’s hand and placing it in the nightstand. She flashes Nakia a grin. “Pizza and bad TV?”

Nakia rests her head on Kamala, pressing her cheek into soft brown hair, enjoying the feeling of being close to Kamala again. “Always.”

*

“Josh!” 

He turns around to where Kamala is waving at him. “Hey, K, Nakia,” he says, tossing a football from one hand to the other. “What’s up?”

“We know,” Kamala says, crossing her arms. “So confess, and this will be easy for you.”

Josh is looking alarmed, and Nakia feels the need to take control of this situation, so she says, “Can we talk, Josh? Alone?”

“But---”

“Very. Very. Alone.” Nakia glares at Kamala for emphasis. 

“Uh, sure?” Josh looks between Kamala and Nakia repeatedly. “I’m not gonna lie, this is super weird, but okay.”

Nakia leads him down the hall, around a corner, and into an empty science lab. She shuts the door and turns to Josh, pulling the letter out of her book bag and handing it to him. She watches his expression carefully as he reads it over, searching for a hint of recognition. 

Nakia is overwhelmingly relieved when she can’t find a thing. 

Josh hands the letter back to her, shaking his head. “Are you asking if I wrote this?”

“More or less.”

“I’m not sure why you’d think that, honestly,” Josh says, rubbing the back of his head. “I mean, we’re not that close.”

“You’ve been hanging with Zoe, right? I thought she might have---told you, about me,” Nakia says. Now that she says it out loud, it’s fairly obvious to see that whoever wrote this letter, it can’t have been Josh. “Ugh, that’s flimsy, I’m so sorry.”

“No, no! It’s absolutely cool, trust me, just---um, you should definitely ask Zoe’s opinion!” 

“I would, but I haven’t seen her since yesterday and she isn’t returning my calls.” It was evidence for the Josh idea, because Zoe is incapable of lying successfully, it’s kinda adorable, but now Nakia just feels neglected. “Have you seen her around?”

Josh shakes his head. “Sorry. Haven’t seen her since yesterday.”

Nakia waves him off. “It’s fine, she has Algebra right now anyways. I’ll just wait outside her class. Thanks, Josh. And sorry, again, for this whole---thing.”

Josh laughs. “It’s super cool, Nakia. I think Kamala’s giving herself muscle cramps trying to peek in, though, so---”

“I’ll get her,” Nakia says with a sigh, and opens the door out of the class. 

*

Nakia drops Kamala off at her Calc class, waves to Bruno and Mike when she passes them in the hall, and stands outside Mrs. Kane’s Algebra class for 5 minutes before she sees Zoe.

“Z!” Nakia calls, jogging to catch up to her. She waits for Zoe to loop her arm through Nakia’s, like always, but Zoe just looks away and down at the ground. Nakia can feel her entire mood drop. 

“Hey, Nakia,” Zoe says. Quiet. Timid, almost. “What’s up?”

Weird. Weird, weird, weird. Nakia smooths her face into a mask of cool indifference, and says, “I called you yesterday.”

“Phone’s dead. Sorry.”

“Okay. It’s fine, I just wanted your opinion on something.”

Zoe shifts her bag. “I’m busy. I’m doing extra credit work.”

Nakia’s face freezes momentarily. “Schoolwork is important,” she agrees mindlessly. “Look at you, being a responsible student.”

“Yeah.” A beat, and then, “Don’t you have to get to World History?” delivered in a soft, toneless voice. Nakia can feel her stomach drop, an ugly tangle of emotion rushing through her veins. 

“Yes, actually. Be seeing you,” Nakia says, and she almost manages to make it sound like she doesn’t care.

*

“Zoe?”

“Yes, Kamala,” Nakia repeats. “Zoe Zimmer blew me off.”

“Wow.” Kamala looks thoughtful for a second. “But Zoe?”

“So close right now. I am so close.”

“Consider practicing mercy, Kiki. It’s more attractive. And speaking of, if the letter writer isn’t Josh, and it definitely isn’t Bruno, then who could it be?”

Nakia snaps. “I don’t care about the stupid letter! I am actually more focused on being a good friend than trying to figure out who some mystery admirer type is! Take notes, Kamala, this is what friendship actually looks like.”

She feels bad, once she gets a look at the stricken expression on Kamala’s face. It’s excessively harsh, considering the fact that Kamala has been trying to hang out with Nakia more often, reinstating movie nights and sleepovers. It’s unfair to take her annoyance out on Kamala, and Nakia knows it.

“Sorry,” Nakia mutters.

“It’s okay,” Kamala says. It’s most definitely not okay.

“No, it isn’t,” Nakia begins, but she’s cut off when Kamala’s phone dings. Whatever the text is, it’s important, because she gets that look on her face, the I’m-lying-right-now-sorry one, and she says, “I have to go. Ammi. Text. Bye.”

“Bye,” Nakia says, watching her only other female friend stride away. She drops her head in her hands and sighs.

“My life is garbage,” she says, to no one in particular.

*

It’s been a week since Zoe’s last conversation with Nakia, and it’s starting to grate on Nakia’s nerves.

Also grating on nerves: Kamala’s week-long disappearing act, the oddly knowing looks Josh seems to be giving her every time their paths cross, Bruno and Mike’s domestic bliss, and school as a whole.

It takes a week for Nakia to stretch to her breaking point, and that breaking point is seeing Zoe and Josh sitting together on a bench outside, heads bowed together, whispering under their breath. They look happy, like a couple again, and Nakia feels a tendril of rage slither through her. She stalks towards them and says, smiling with all her teeth, “Zoe! Josh! Hey!”

Zoe startles, hair flying, almost falling off the bench. Josh on the other hand just smiles, raising a hand in greeting. “Hey to you too.”

“What’s up?” Upbeat, cheerful, entirely fake. Nakia could win an award with how hard she’s acting right now. 

“Nothing, actually, I was just leaving,” Josh replies, standing up with a smile. Zoe opens her mouth to say something, but Josh is already halfway across the grass, calling out to a friend on the football team.

It’s just Nakia and Zoe. Zoe stares at a pigeon pecking at crumbs, and Nakia stares at Zoe. Her cheekbones highlighted by the rays of sun slanting through the tree branches, her hair glowing wherever light catches the strands. Nakia feels a surge of undefinable emotion that she converts into anger, and says, “What’s wrong with you?”

Zoe starts again, like she’d forgotten Nakia was around. “What?”

“What. Is. Wrong. With. You.”

“Nothing! I mean---I---nothing, it’s all great!”

“Then why have you been avoiding me?”

Zoe has the grace to look ashamed, bright pink staining her cheeks. “You noticed, huh?”

Nakia rolls her eyes, plopping down next to Zoe gracelessly. “Kinda hard not to, especially after you literally ran the other way to avoid me on Wednesday. Seriously, what's this about? Was it something I did?”

“No!” Zoe exclaims. “God no, it’s not you at all. It’s me, all me.”

“You sound like you’re breaking up with me.” Nakia’s joking, but Zoe---

“Kinda, yeah.”

For one long, awful moment, Nakia can’t breathe. “What does that mean?”

Zoe sets her jaw. “It means we can’t be friends anymore.”

Nakia’s panicking, but outwardly, she’s not showing a thing. “Zoe, explain. I don’t understand.”

“I can’t be your friend anymore. Look, Kiki---”

“You don’t get to call me that right now. especially right now.” Panic turns to fury. Nakia can’t shut herself up. “We’re friends. You aren’t even trying to explain, or to talk it through. You just decided, arbitrarily, that our friendship is over. You decided. I don’t agree. At all, so why don’t you---”

“‘There is so much I admire about you’,” Zoe recites, and Nakia feels like she’s been punched through the cheat. “‘You inspire me to be a more real, more genuine, and ultimately better version of myself everyday. I love your passion, your intellect, your smile. I am in love with you, Nakia Bahadir.’” Zoe stares at the ground, and Nakia can see how glassy her eyes are, how her fingers are trembling on her lap, how close her voice is to cracking entirely. “Now do you get it?”

“It was you,” Nakia breathes. Her blood is made of light, mothwings beat at her insides in ticklish, giddy flurries, and everything falls into place. Everything feels so right. “You wrote me that letter, you---Zoe, what does this have to do with our friendship?”

“What doesn’t it have to do with our friendship? I’m---I like you, Nakia. As more than a friend. Don’t tell me you’re okay with that; you didn’t even consider the possibility that I was the one who wrote that letter,” Zoe bites out, and those are definitely tears in her voice. 

Nakia presses her thigh against Zoe’s carefully, lets her hand skim Zoe’s thigh to curl around Zoe’s hand, fingers cradled in Nakia’s. The stutter of Zoe’s breath is not imagined. The sunlight slants through the leaves to turn Zoe’s blue eyes crystalline when Nakia tilts her face upwards and to the side. Nakia’s face is bright red, hot, on fire, but her voice is soft when she says, “That was a very heterosexist stance of me to take.”

Laughter bubbles out of Zoe’s throat. Nakia can see the way her muscles work when she says, “That’s such a you thing to say, Kiki.” Thick voice, sniffles, but it’s Zoe, her Zoe, whose hand is still cradled in Nakia’s own, whose thigh is still pressed against Nakia’s own, whose eyes are still locked on Nakia’s own.

“You like that about me,” Nakia says, lips turning up in a tiny smirk. “There are so many things you like about me, and I am going to recount them all in loving detail.”

“You need to stop,” Zoe says, ducking her face into Nakia’s shoulder. Nakia squeezes her hand in response.

“Never.”

**Author's Note:**

> with thanks to @frostbite883 on tumblr for the prompt, and also ms marvel #9 for all the gay. i'm alive. i'm in love. 
> 
> find me on tumblr @slmonbaz


End file.
